Beany's adventure WIP

[rossk]

I've been working on my short "Beany and the Giant Melon" a bit. I've run into some problems, but so far have been able to work around them decently.

 

You can see a current render (just realtime) of the animation here. (its about 9.5 mB)

 

Next on the checklist is to fix the "excited skip"...

[rossk]

I did some work on the skip. See it here (4.2 mB)

Suggestions on anything would be great.

 

Thanks,

--Ross

[rossk]

K, the skip still definately needs more work, but I made one slight change to improve it and also rendered out the animation at a higher resolution (6.9mB).

 

Suggestions on anything (especially the skip though)?

 

Otherwise I'll be moving to creating some better lighting... not really sure how to go about lighting an outdoor scene light this at all so this should be a lot of experimentation... is this one of those times that a skylight rig (like one of Yves) would be used? I really know very little about lighting... but looks like I'll learn a lot in the next few days.

[AniMattor]

Sorry you've had no comments. You're off to a good start. I'd suggest moving the body up and down some more on the skip. right now the feet go all over, but the torso stays pretty still. Also, the eyes seem to kind of float. It looks like you're going for a stylized look (seeing both eyes on the same side) but you don't do it consistently.

 

keep it up!

[rossk]

Excellent, thank you! Good advice on the body during the skip... and thanks a ton for pointing out the eyes too... the eyes on one side of the head was one of the main stylish (or attempts at it) affects on Beany so I'm suprised that I completely forgot about it for the 2nd half of the animation

 

Thanks again,

--Ross

[trajcedrv]

rossk... I've just managed to see your anim: cool character, well animated so far... I cannot add something to the skip comment that Matt gave.

 

However, you'll definitely need to work on lights: I think that skylight rig would be the first choice (read carefully how to use it, you'll avoid a lot of frustration if you rtfm;-P)

 

I felt that your bird character is in desperate need of proper texturing... I coudn't recognize any detalis on it... of course that is just my oppinion, so feel free to ingnore it

 

Drvarceto

[rossk]

Yeah, I haven't changed the default light setup at all yet. I'll try using a skylight rig like you said. Is Yves's website the best place to learn how to do that? and what does "rtfm" mean?

 

I agree that the bird does need some more detail and whatnot... however this is a realtime render, so what little detail it does have isn't showing up here. Its definately on my list of things to do though to add a bit more detail to the bird.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I should have a bit of time later tonight to make some changes.

 

--Ross

[rossk]

K, I made an attempt at exaggerating the body's motion during the skip a bit more and adding a bit more weight... I also changed the eyes back to the side for most of the later part and edited them for blinks, showing emotion, etc. You can see the new animation here (6.8 mB)

 

Any more critiques suggestions on the animation?

In the meantime I'm going to start looking into the skylights...

 

Thanks,

--Ross

[dborruso]

looking better. Why is that tree in the back shimmering like that? It is very distracting. Whatever you used to make those long green leave strands I would change.

[Uzzbay]

Looks cool! I agree that the shimmering tree is a bit distracting. But as far as the skip, not sure if you are going for a "style", but with a normal skip...one of the feet almost slides across the ground while the other is up in the air.. what you have here is more like hopping..in which case there needs to be more upper body movement like a torso bend before the hop.

 

Edit: i watched it again and for a hop..it's missing lower body squishing (not upper body like i said before) The reason i say lower body is because your character doesn't have legs, therefore the movement that usually is associated with them needs to be reflected in the lower body a bit.

[rossk]

I think its mostly because the hair on the trees is very thin and in the realtime render it isn't anti-aliased. It looks much better when the final render is done... though I may bump up the hair thickness a tiny bit.

 

--Ross

 

Looks cool! I agree that the shimmering tree is a bit distracting. But as far as the skip, not sure if you are going for a "style", but with a normal skip...one of the feet almost slides across the ground while the other is up in the air.. what you have here is more like hopping..in which case there needs to be more upper body movement like a torso bend before the hop.

 

Edit: i watched it again and for a hop..it's missing lower body squishing (not upper body like i said before) The reason i say lower body is because your character doesn't have legs, therefore the movement that usually is associated with them needs to be reflected in the lower body a bit.

 

Good points, thanks! I'll get working on that for the next version.

 

--Ross

[Fishman]

Ross,

It looks to me like his hops don't originate in his feet. I think what is lacking is a stretch pose at the point he leaves the ground. You come pretty close when he does his leap to climb the knoll. Solidify that pose and use it as an example for the slightly less powerful ones for when he is just hopping. The other thing that keeps distracting me is the intersections of the feet and the body. Makes it hard to figure out, even though he has no legs how his feet work. Even if you don't show legs, I think you want the implications that they are there.

 

I admire the effort you are putting in to make this work come to fruition.

 

Scott

 

PS: I assume the melon looks more rounded in a final render.

[robcat2075]

It looks to me like his hops don't originate in his feet. I think what is lacking is a stretch pose at the point he leaves the ground.

 

I agree. Sometimes the feet are going up at the same time as the body. Since the feet push the body off the ground, they have to stay in contact with the ground (pushing) until the body has gotten enough momentum to carry it up. Then the feet are yanked up behind it.

 

Right now he's in the air too long for the small push he's getting.

 

If your rig permits it you can lift the heels up while leaving the toes planted to give more extension on the push.

[rossk]

Thanks for the advice all!

Sorry for the abscence for awhile... I had a paper worth 20% of my grade in one class and a programming project worth 30% of my grade in another class due this past week and a half.

I just attempted at fixing the skip per your suggestions, but my dopesheet was getting a bit scrumy and I miss having access to the curves editor (the program freezes whenever I try to open it), so I've decided it might be easier to create a quick skip from scratch... plus I should be able to learn more that way.

I'll try to get the clip posted as soon as possible.

 

Thanks again everyone for the help,

--Ross